Student-Shoving Principal Leaves Post

“It’s clear that he could not be the leader of the school right now, given his actions and the feelings of the school community,” said Amanda Pinto, Achievement First’s senior communications director. ​“I think both of those things became clear to him.”

A principal from another school within Achievement First’s network will step in to lead Amistad, doing double duty at both schools, Pinto said. That interim principal is currently announcing the new responsibilities at their current school and will be named publicly soon, she added.

Amistad had been searching for a new principal since last November, a month after Barth was disciplined for restraining the scholar. That replacement will be announced later in the year, Pinto said.

Within the next week, three leaders from the charter network — co-CEO and Superintendent Doug McCurry, Chief External Officer Fatimah Barker, and Regional Superintendent Amy D’Angelo — will meet with families and staff, Pinto said. And Amistad’s administration will engage students in similar discussions.

“This is about more than a leadership change. That is why you’re seeing three leaders from the network come to meet with families and staff to engage them in discussion,” Pinto said. ​“There is more that needs to go on than just changing the leader, because that’s not going to fix all the concerns that people have. These meetings will hopefully surface concerns to meet them head-on.”

Steven Cotton, the behavioral specialist who kicked off the conversation about the rigid disciplinary system at Amistad High School in a Facebook Live video, said he was ​“happy” that Barth is gone.

“He won’t be able to intimidate or put his hands on anybody anytime soon,” he said.

Cotton said Barth’s departure could create the conditions for change to happen, but he worried that the charter wouldn’t follow through.

He questioned why Barth hadn’t been dismissed earlier, especially after he emailed the charter network’s co-CEOs, Doug McCurry and Dacia Toll, about the video last October, telling them that what he saw was ​“over the top and unprofessional,” ​“aggressive and almost violent.”

“To me, that sounds like a typical Achievement First coverup. My question to them is if he was already going to leave and they were already looking for new leadership, why did you feel it was okay to keep him there for the rest of the year? If the video never came out, would you have let him stay around?” he asked. ​“It shows their way of thinking: This is the culture of your school, that you were willing to allow somebody to stay there for so long.”

Cotton said he didn’t expect much to come from Achievement First’s listening tour. He said he’d seen the network send its bigwigs down to hear from parents before — without instituting any real reforms after.

“I just want to point out to people, don’t be fooled. This is what they’re going to do: They’re going to say they want to hear what you black people want to say, they’re going to put out people who look just like you and they’re going to tell you all this good stuff to calm you down and make you comfortable with keeping your kids there,” he said. ​“But there are things that can be done now, like bringing a restorative philosophy into schools and allowing teachers to build relationships. But that doesn’t fit into the model that they have set.”

Recent graduates who’ve protested before, walking out of school in 2016 and skipping a big college announcement in 2018, said they’ve noticed that pattern too.

“What the AF system in general does is have meetings and say that they are going to change things,” said Tyshon Hill, who graduated last year and now studies at the University of Connecticut. ​“But every time it comes down to it, things get swept under the rug.”

The original full version of this story follows, including interviews with students and background on the issue:

Video Captures Principal Shoving Student

The future of Achievement First Amistad High School’s leadership is uncertain and discipline under scrutiny, as a top administrator who was reprimanded for shoving a student in the back heads for the exits.

Last fall, Morgan Barth, principal of the nationally acclaimed charter high school on Dixwell Avenue, manhandled a student who was trying to leave a debrief in his office about an earlier altercation. The following month, he told the charter’s board of directors that he plans to quit once the school year ends.

His actions were caught on video.

The Barth video is one of two that raise questions about the school’s approach.

Sparked by a new, second video, debate has been raging both in the school and in the community on larger questions about the school’s discipline approach. In the latest instance in which the top-rated school’s methods are being questioned, after a mass walkout in 2016, many of Amistad’s students reported feeling still like they go to school in a prison-like environment, where minor infractions like laughing, asking for a pencil or wearing the wrong-colored socks can land a student in detention.

That has led to questions about whether the charter network sets a double standard for the principal and his students.

For its own employee, the charter network’s administrators agreed that the school ​“leader” (the charter’s term for its principal) had gone too far but they allowed him to remain on the job.

At the same time, for its students, the charter network’s administrators encourage school employees to hand out punishments that plucked kids from class, often leaving them feeling beaten down and sometimes even leading to their transfer out of the school.

This story is based on interviews with more than 15 students, parents, recent graduates and former staff. Most of the current students asked to remain anonymous, saying they were afraid they’d get in trouble for spilling to a reporter.

The discussion was prompted by Steven Cotton, one of the high school’s few black male staffers, who quit last week in protest and unloaded his complaints about Amistad’s culture in an online video that has been shared hundreds of times.

In interviews, members of the predominantly black student body said they are taught to conform. In the charter’s ​“no-excuses” model, some feel that they’re being ​“white-washed,” taught to speak properly and dress presentably, without being able to embrace their own identity.

Almost unanimously, the students praised Amistad’s rigorous academics; they said the school had propelled them into top-tier colleges. But many said the stress undermined their learning. They questioned whether it was worth it.

“The decision for parents is if their child’s education is more important than their mental health,” said one 2017 graduate. ​“We want to learn, but there is only so much, mentally, that you can handle.”

First Video

In mid-October, Barth confronted a ​“scholar” (the school’s term for student) in his office doorway. As the student tried to get by him, Barth grabbed the young man’s left arm, yanked it behind his back and shoved him into a corner.

The student eventually pulled away. Barth tailed him, blocking him from retrieving his backpack and walking down the hall.

The incident was caught on a security camera. Barth later told his colleagues that he’d been hit; the video showed that he had initiated physical contact.

In a statement, Achievement First said that Barth had been disciplined; it declined to say how. The network also declined to discuss what happened just before the tussle was caught on film, citing student privacy laws.

“The conduct shown in the video is unacceptable,” said AF’s Chief External Officer Fatimah Barker. ​“When this incident happened … we conducted an internal investigation, documented the incident in accordance with state laws, and worked with the family, including sharing the video with them. In addition, Morgan Barth was disciplined and also required to attain additional restraint training.”

It wasn’t the first time that Barth had initiated physical contact with a student.

Around 2013, when he was principal of Achievement First Bridgeport Academy Middle School, Barth pushed a kid in the back for trying to reenter the building after dismissal, the student’s older brother said.

Bertram Johnson, Jr., said that he and his brother were waiting for their sister’s class to come down before they planned to head home together. After standing around for a while, they tried to reenter the school to see if they could retrieve her from her classroom.

“As I walked in, however, I heard some commotion behind me. When I looked, I could see my brother was visibly angry and shouting at Morgan [Barth], saying things like, ​‘Don’t touch me’ and ​‘You didn’t have to push me. I almost fell down the stairs,’” Johnson recalled. ​“He began to raise his voice at my brother and I telling us we can’t get inside and she’ll be out when she’s supposed to.”

Their dad was also watching the entire scene from his car parked across the street, Johnson said. After watching what happened, he came over to the foot of the stairs and yelled at Barth, saying, ​“I saw you push him. I saw it, so don’t even bother lying,” Johnson remembered. Barth said he felt threatened and headed back inside, he added.

“Both of my parents attempted to reach him multiple times since then to have a meeting or conversation about what happened and he always had somebody lie to say he wasn’t available,” Johnson said. ​“He was petty enough to make personal visits to our classrooms during the day and issue any demerit possible to any of the three of us, but was too childish to show himself to our parents.”

Asked about Johnson’s account on Wednesday afternoon, Achievement First said it would not be able to respond in time for publication.

Johnson eventually went on to Amistad for high school. He stayed for three and a half years, until his depression got so bad that his father pulled him out of the school.

Barth declined to be interviewed for this story.

Second Video

The conversation that’s been swirling around the high school this week was kicked off by the departure of a much-loved behavioral specialist.

After working at Amistad for five years, Cotton called it quits last week. He said he felt that he could do more for the students by speaking out.

He said he turned down a severance payout that came with a non-disparagement clause. Then he posted a 45-minute Facebook Live video, in which he said that the school had been oppressive, both for students and staff.

What did he hope would change? ​“I used to use this one simple word: humanity,” Cotton said. ​“I’m looking for them to be more human. Get rid of this oppressive system.

Cotton was one of the few black males working in the building, where 28 percent of the staff is black, brown or multiracial. He worked on the one all-black team: the behavioral specialists who are focused on ​“issuing punishment to the ​‘bad students,’” as Tini Haynes, a 2017 graduate who organized Amistad’s initial walk-out, put it.

“Think about the demographics that you’re working with: black and brown kids who already live in oppressive system. Then we’re going to bring them to school under another oppressive system that literally mimics their everyday life,” he went on. ​“I’m the police, Mr. Barth’s the warden, teachers are C.O.’s, classrooms are prison. That’s how it’s run: You mess up in your cell, we bring you to the hold for 50 minutes.”

Cotton returned to Amistad’s campus on Wednesday just after dismissal, and a group of kids gathered around him on a side-street to catch up. Amistad High’s Director of Operations Sandy Mackie then walked up and asked this reporter not to interview students, saying they had enough on their minds with midterm exams.

Many of the Amistad students with whom the Independent spoke to criticized the school’s severe rules for behavior. They said they could tell that their teachers hadn’t received enough training in how to control their classrooms. Without other tools, they usually rely on punishments, passing out demerits for minor behavioral issues, they said.

The state’s Department of Education has scrutinized Amistad for their disproportionately high rate of suspensions, with nearly three times as many students kept out of class as in New Haven’s other public schools.

Under the demerit system, a minor infraction is worth two negative points, and a bigger infraction is worth five negative points. Ten points lands a student in detention for an hour after school.

Several students griped about the punishment for forgetting supplies. If students turn to their neighbors to ask for a pencil, they can get two demerits at once: for lack of preparation and for the side conversation. One freshman boy said that it was difficult to buy administrator’s language that Amistad is like a family when he could get in trouble for helping his classmates out.

Others complained about the uniform. If a student is missing an article of clothing, they can be punished in each period. Sometimes, students are even told that they have to go home to change before they’re allowed into class.

Some graduates said they detected an uncomfortable racial dynamic in the white leadership cracking down on the black and brown student body.

“It was a school designed to help us get to college and succeed in college, but it wanted to white-wash us, mold is into ​‘acceptable black and Latino students,’” said Nicole Valdovinos, a 2017 graduate now at the University of Connecticut. ​“They told us this is how you should dress, because if you dress how you want, they won’t look at you the same. They told us how to speak, and we often joked about switching on our white switch when speaking to colleges over the phone. Everything had consequences. No matter how good we were, we were never good enough.”

Even some parents called the rules too strict.

“They call you for every little thing,” said King Darice Bey, a dad who pulled his daughter out of Amistad in November 2017. ​“They put the kids in detention for not keeping their hands on the table.”

The stress can be counterproductive, several current students said, as it shifts their emotional response to learning from the excitement of discovering new things to the pain of working through tasks.

Sinjely Diaz, a senior who went from Troup School to Amistad, said that she felt unable to keep up with the homework, especially as she dealt with an attention-deficit disorder.

“I was more stressed then I’ve ever been,” she said. ​“I came home and cried sometimes because my mom didn’t believe me. She just thought I wasn’t trying. I tried so hard, but nothing was ever enough.”

Diaz was held back for a year to catch up on her academics, but she said that no one at the school checked in to ask her what she’d been going through. She said she didn’t feel like an individual there.

“I can’t remember a day that I didn’t wake up and dread going to school for the simple fact of I couldn’t be myself,” she said. ​“The AF system and the people who run it are strict examples of how you shouldn’t let people treat you and brainwash you into thinking your voice, opinion, and creativity do not matter.”

Several recent graduates also pointed out that the drilled-in obedience didn’t do them any good in college classes.

“Now that I am older, I understand how the way they wanted me to act in school didn’t apply to the real world,” said Michel’le Langley, now a student at Southern Connecticut State University. ​“I went to college and was scared to get out of my seat and go to the bathroom when I needed to. The professors were so lenient that it took me by surprise. And while walking to class and taking detours at SCSU, I was pretty sure that a staff member would walk behind me at any moment, tap me to ask where I should be heading and [tell me] to get there. No one ever did.”

Recent alums offered mixed opinions about whether the demerit system could be salvaged, particularly as Amistad accepts more students from the city’s public middle schools.

Ismail Abdussabar, a 2013 graduate, called it unfair to punish students who weren’t used to Achievement First’s rulebook. ​“That’s a culture that you can’t be thrown into; you have to grow into it,” he said. Especially as class sizes have grown each year, it’s tougher for teachers to build the relationships that can make a demerits an effective learning tool, Abdussabar added.

But the 2017 graduate who asked to remain anonymous said the demerits actually weighed more on students who’d been conditioned since 5th grade to associate demerits with failure. ​“Each one affects you more and more,” he said.

Cotton said that Amistad needs to do more to support its teachers and encourage its students.

“They’re not realizing that African-American people are a very creative people and very energetic people. We like to be up; we like to be moving. There’s other ways that we’re stimulated to learn besides sitting with your back straight, eyes forward,” he said. ​“They refuse to accept that. I’ve challenged them to stop using the same raggedy system that’s been in place for over 100 years now. We’re supposed to be a new, cutting-edge school. Shouldn’t we be using some new, cutting-edge teaching methods?”

In a statement, Achievement First said that Cotton’s complaints weren’t true, though it added that changes would be coming to Amistad, especially as a new school leader is named for next year to replace Barth.

“Many of the issues Steve Cotton raises are not accurate. We are proud of many great things happening for kids at AF Amistad High, and we also know there are ongoing issues that we must address,” Barker said. ​“Independent of this video, several changes are underway. Earlier this year, Morgan Barth had decided that this is his final year at AF Amistad High, and we will be making a number of adjustments at the school, including naming a new school leader.”

Achievement First added that it’s ​“committed to a process of intently listening” to students, families and staff to improve the network’s schools, said AF’s Communications Director Amanda Pinto. It’s figuring out plans to ​“hear and respond” to concerns, both immediately and during the transition in leaders, she added.